God has given us a vision of seeing Jesus in demonstration and power in the earth today, which will begin with us, then our church house, and then outside to the lives of others. Let’s discuss, “prayer to recover from unbelief” so that we might enter into this vision.
We continue the forty day prayer focus toward this end.
Our Forty Day Prayer Focus:
The unveiling of our eyes to see, hear, understand and experience Jesus in a fashion so that He begins for us the ability for us to encounter Him as Saul of Tarsus encountered Him on the way to Damascus. This was the point in which “Saul” became “Paul”, and in 1 Corinthians said,
4 And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5 that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. 1 Corinthians 2:4-5
We would all agree that we could use some more power, not for our own usage, but to see God’s mountain moving, Holy Spirit demonstration, so that we are not stuck. We are in a place that we need more of God to be able to get where we are going.
We can be
- A natural man, which is a soulish Christian
- A spiritual Christian, which is one who lives from their spirit
- A carnal Christian, which is one who resources from their flesh.
We grow into to be a spiritual Christian.
Wherever there is envy, strife and division, that’s a sign that we are still resourcing our self.
- Envy: We are frustrated with the results, therefore envy grows. We need something in order to be fulfilled.
- Striving: We fight to get to the water first because we live from fear. There is not enough for everybody.
- Division: Division occurs because we begin to become argumentative and stuck on certain ideas. We are really opinionated.
Paul then goes in 1 Corinthians 3 and says, “Hey, the whole thing is Jesus Christ”. He then builds from there. At the end of this chapter, he calls everyone to remember this one thing which was a huge thought.
21 Therefore let no one boast in men. For all things are yours: 22 whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world or life or death, or things present or things to come—all are yours. 23 And you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s. 1 Corinthians 3:21-13
We are not to be drawn externally but rather to live by faith and not by sight, because everything, that we are aware of needing, is already ours in Christ. Therefore, to discover Christ is to get the answer to the need. To encounter Jesus is everything we need.
In seasons when we learn, grow, mature and discover all kinds of disciplines and new ways to live, Jesus can become diminished as the All-Sufficient One, as the Way, the Truth and the Life.
We begin to say “Yes, Jesus got me into the kingdom, and I’m grateful for salvation, but now I’m building on that.” Then, after a while, what we built is just wood, hay and stubble. It can’t and doesn’t withstand fire, so it gets overtaken.
Romans 8, tells us,
There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. Romans 8:1
I have been hearing the Lord say, “There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ – there are only consequences. But because the condemnation has been removed from the consequences of your actions, now the consequences are doors for redemption”.
If we could remove punishment from:
- What we are going through
- This is our fault
- We lost our opportunity
- We will never become who we were going to be because of this and now we are stuck, we will never have that
- We will never do this….
If we could expunge that, live in the same world we are in but instead, look at every situation as
- A door for Jesus
- As a discovery point
- A connecting point
- An opportunity to see redemption just come alive
…it would change our whole outlook!
We wouldn’t try to get OUT of our problems—we would let Jesus INTO our problems.
I have been meditating on the four “Winds” of salvation.
I ask God to release what I call “Winds”. I ask that the Holy Spirit would bring the winds of salvation and blow over us. I’ve been meditating on this for a long time, so we could walk through any place in the bible and see that
this is a repetitive thought in the salvation Jesus brought us.
It is first spoken of in clarity in Acts 3, when Peter answered an amazed crowd. A man had just been healed from lameness; and now Peter talks to them about Jesus.
14 But you denied the Holy One and the Just, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, 15 and killed the Prince of life, whom God raised from the dead, of which we are witnesses. Acts 3:14-15
Again, this is just fifty days from when Jesus had been crucified, so everyone present obviously had connectivity. They knew to where he was pointing…
16 And His name, through faith in His name, has
made this man strong, whom you see and know. Yes, the faith which comes through Him has given him this
perfect soundness in the presence of you all. 17 “Yet now,
brethren, I know that you did it
in ignorance, as did also your
rulers. Acts 3:16-17
Two kinds of unbelief
1. There is an unbelief that comes because we have never known something.
We hadn’t heard or no one ever told us. This is the unbelief that is being addressed here. They killed the Prince of life. God sends His Son and we kill Him. This was not a great move, as far as it would appear. But at the same time, there is total opportunity for everyone to come into the kingdom, because nobody got it. Nobody saw it. Everybody was just going with the program.
So when you learn something that you had never heard before, that learning can overcome the unbelief. It can overcome the position that says, “I didn’t know you could be saved”.
An example would be when someone told me about Jesus. I had heard about God. I had read the Old Testament, but I didn’t know who Jesus was. I was then told that He is the means from where we can come to God. And, by what He did by dying for our sins, and being raise from the dead, now we can come to God and be forgiven. It was the first time, which I can remember, that I REALLY heard it. When I heard it, I said, “Well, let’s pray right now!” That message overcame my ignorance where my unbelief was rooted, at that time.
As believers, who walk with God for any length of time, there are three places where unbelief seems to find its way into our lives. They are all recorded in Mark.
The unbelief that grows through familiarity.
6 And He marveled because of their unbelief. Then He went about the villages in a circuit, teaching. Mark 6:6
In this case, Jesus, in His hometown Nazareth Who was standing up in the synagogue on the Sabbath, declaring truth. Those listening were saying, “Whoa. Where did this guy get this? What happened to Jesus?” But then they thought back, “Wait a minute, we’ve always known Jesus. We know His mom. We know His brothers. We know His sisters.” Their past relationship forbade them to enter into a new relationship. This too can happen to any of us.
Jesus is coming to Jubilee. He is going to touch you and me. When He does, some of us are going to be totally projected into new things. One will say to another, “Whoa, I didn’t know you could sing.” And they will say, “I didn’t know I could sing either.”
But some of us may say, “Wait a minute. She really can’t sing,” and withdraw our faith. This is unbelief. It is an unbelief that comes from a decision that we make internally while we are being presented an opportunity to enter into a place with God in someone.
We want to release each other to become everything Jesus is doing in each of us. We want to give permission to everyone for Jesus to come alive and not enter into envy, strife and division.
2. Now, there is another kind of unbelief that comes, which is all too familiar for any of us. It comes through prolonged trauma, drama and abuse.
3.Extreme or long exposure to defeat makes it hard to believe for victory. Long exposure to demonic harassment makes it almost impossible to believe. We start to doubt whether God can and whether He is willing.
This is found in Mark 9.
22 And often he has thrown him both into the fire and into the water to destroy him. But if You can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” 23 Jesus said to him, “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.” 24 Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” Mark 9:22-24
Here, Jesus is encountering the father of the epileptic demonized boy who was being thrown into fire and water to be killed. The father says, “If You are able, would You have mercy.” And Jesus said, “If you are able to believe, all things are possible…”
As seen in scripture, that usually in this kind of unbelief, God will invite us to tell Him the story of how we got to the place we are. When something is touching us, we can’t respond with “Yes I receive it—Go for it Jesus”. Instead, we need to have the liberty to tell the story to the Father, to Jesus, and ask Him “What’s caused me to come to my position of unbelief?”
4. The third kind of unbelief mentioned in scripture is found in Mark 16. It is an unbelief that comes through a horrific event—a murder, a death, something that just comes upon you when hope is at its highest, all of a sudden it’s ripped from under you and you’re just stuck. You can’t believe though you want to believe. And that’s what it says of the disciples after the resurrection.
Like the guys on the road to Emmaus, when Jesus appeared to them and asked them, “Why are you so sad?” They answered, “Well, haven’t You heard?” “What?” “About Jesus”. They went on to tell the story of a Jesus they were expecting to be the leader and liberator of Israel, who died, and now there had been reports of Him being raised from the dead.
Unbelief can settle over our lives through:
- familiarity or
- through prolonged exposure to abuse and trauma or
- through a cataclysmic, huge event,
We can carry and if we are not careful, we can begin to defend and protect it.
I want to propose to you my heart. I want God to invade that unbelief in me. I want to encounter Jesus again, in such a fashion that He dismantles those places where I’ve had prolonged exposure therefore it has left me saying, “Well, I don’t know if You can, if You’re willing….I’m not sure if I’m going to listen to the report from the ladies that say He is raised from the dead. I’ve known you too long and to well, to think that God can be doing something so
phenomenal with you.” I want to let God come in.
In this account, at the temple mount, Peter is speaking to Jewish people, who are very devout. They are all there to worship. They are like a church group. He says to them,
19 Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, 20 and that He may send Jesus Christ, who was preached to you before, 21 whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began. Acts 3:19-21
Right here,in verse 19, we can see the four winds or four elements, which accompany belief in Jesus, encountering Jesus, seeing Jesus, Him stepping into your life anew.
1. The first one is Repent. Repent is not the idea that we have such remorse, that we feel so badly about ourselves, that we promise we will never do it again. There is a form of that. But this one simply means to think differently, to think anew, to consider a thought you never considered. It would be a moment where we can behold something. It is a paradox, a moment of a paradigm thinking change. It is where we have to see, hear and understand something new to do the next step which is the response.
2. This next step is conversion. Conversion simply means to turn and go a different direction. When I repent, I consider a new thought that Jesus is introducing, the scriptures are making clear, or the Spirit of God is making aware. Now, I see it. I never saw it before. Maybe I was arguing about it a month ago, but now, all of sudden, it makes sense to me today. I see it. I turn to what I see, turning from where I was. I have a mindset change, an action change.
3. When I turn, what I encounter is forgiveness. Here it is called the blotting out of sins. This is a-beautiful word because to, “blot out” means to go to the point of origin and remove its place. It is really a powerful word.
These four words that I’m using, which are the ones that are most common, and the ones we’ve been most exposed to…Repent; Convert; Forgive, and then the forth one
4. The forth one is to come into inheritance, back into what you were called to be. Here he says is times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord.
Example: In Isaiah 6, Isaiah suddenly saw the glory of God. He saw, he heard, he was undone. He saw himself in a way he had not seen himself. He said, “Oh, I am an unclean man with unclean people. What do I do?”
- He saw something different
- He responded with his conversion
- Then came the coal of fire which was the cleansing of his iniquity, and
- Then came a fresh calling into his ministry
It is the same thing – forgiveness and cleansing, or inheritance and calling, or times of refreshing.
Go, and have some fun with this. See if these things be so. If they are so, we want them to happen to us. This is not just for one time. We want it every time. We want it every seasonal change. We need to shift. We need to think differently. We need to turn to the new that we see. We need to encounter a healing, forgiveness and then we need to step into the new thing that God has called us to be and do.
1. We want to repent.
2. We want to convert.
3. We want to be forgiven.
4. We want to enter into inheritance.
If you would like to receive the daily Forty Day Scripture Meditation Scriptures that are being emailed to the Champions, email your request to prayer@jubileechurch.org.
Upcoming Events
Wednesday, February 11, 2015, 7pm: Steve and Shirley Quon will continue their message on being healed from the inside out.Steve and Shirley lead Restoration Ministries. This week starts the Freedom Encounter for those who choose to get restored in the freedom that is our inheritance,
Sunday, February 15, 2015, 9am: Larry Bingman will share, “The Gift of Sharing Christ”.
Sunday, 10:20am: Join us for the Nations Prayer—“Ask of Me and I will give you the nations as your inheritance”.Join us for 30 minutes of reigning prayer over His earth.
Sunday, 11am: I will be sharing “Chief of Sinners”. How Saul became Paul, He became the pattern of longsuffering for all who would believe. Imagine what will happen as the Lord does this again!
